At what’s normally a dull time for electoral news, the Federal Court has decided to beat Santa to the punch by announcing its judgement in the challenges to the Chisholm and Kooyong results at 2:15pm today. I’ll add a dedicated post when that happens, but for the time being, here’s the latest thread for general political discussion, it being long past time for a new one.
Two other items of news I can think to mention: the United States Studies Centre has published a report that compares survey results on political attitudes in Australia and the United States, which reaches the intuitive conclusions that Australians are both less conservative and less polarised by partisanship; and GhostWhoVotes offers a neat presentation of the states’ House of Representatives seat entitlements based on current population numbers, six months out from the final determination.
lizzie
Yep. A bad year that was. And a rotten decade to go with it.
If Labor has to lovecoal in order to defeat the Greens then lovecoal.
@GeraldKutney tweets
Science you don’t like, is not: Liberal, socialist, communist, fascist, globalist…
It is still just science.
– #climatechange #climatecrisis #climatepoli
guytaur says:
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 at 12:06 pm
FredNK
All excuses because you can’t stand the fact that coal is toxic to life as we know it on planet earth. You want your beloved coal mine open.
And you continue with your all out effort to stop real progress. Come on another rendition of same/same to keep the party that is destroying the environmental movement happy.
Boerwar
I’m still irritated by the media decision that 2000 was the beginning of a new decade and century rather than the end of the old one, and here we go again into 2020. Our marketing world.
“If Labor has to lovecoal in order to defeat the Greens then lovecoal.”
Just… wow.
They did not choose to be thrown into this. Morrison being a tool doesnt mean we should spotlight his children.
There is nuance available here. Morrison defended his absence by claiming family holiday in Hawaii. So if any evidence appears that he was in NY, he can be questioned on what he was doing there, with whom, what purpose and if that constitutes ‘family time’. We do not need to see happy snaps of his children. The less their image and names are used the better.
Guytaur, you are starting to sound like the guy who can’t come to bed because someone is wrong on the internet.
There’s been a bit of discussion around the power of symbols. It coloured my reading of the United States Studies Centre report linked to by WB.
Trump creates bias.
Symbols can work against you.
I don’t think this is a new joke, but…
Looking at the temp charts, the inflection point from very gradual cooling to sudden heating occurred in the latter 19th century. We’re now 2 degrees warmer than we were 160 years ago. We can add at least another 1 degree to that within the coming decade or two.
So we’re within reach of 3 degrees of warming since the late 19th century. 4 degrees is very likely.
During the Permian extinction the earth’s temps rise 10 degrees very abruptly, though less steeply than we’re now experiencing. During the Permian, the oceans became a anoxic and acidified. Nearly all life in the oceans was destroyed. Comparable destruction in the terrestrial ecosystem occurred.
We are already on track to repeat the Permian extinction. This is within sight. By the end of the coming century if not before nearly all life will be destroyed if we do not change the trajectories.
We are not helpless. But it sure feels like it.
I assume that one reason that there is a visceral response to Ms Thunberg is that she provides a sort of political fig leaf for parties that are on the political Never Never.
I refer to powerless minor parties who have made little or no practical difference for their entire existence and who have no real political prospects for the foreseeable future.
The powerless members of the powerless parties replace practical outputs, such as CO2 emissions reductions, with political hoopla, political fervour, and various noisy political activities.
Curiously enough, many species do such behaviours under stress. They are known as displacement activities:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbiology/displacement-behavior
Astrobleme says:
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 at 12:12 pm
“If Labor has to lovecoal in order to defeat the Greens then lovecoal.”
Just… wow.
The greens have been successful in destroying the environmental movement, successful in stopping real action on reducing our emissions. Something has to change.
It is unlikely the Greens will recognize what they have done and do the right thing and disband.
For the sake of the environment, for the sake of climate change action Labor has to fight them. They are the junior party in the anti Labor coalition and they need to be treated with equal contempt.
Images of firefighters still working on Christmas Day – good or bad for the government?
On Albanese, I thought him putting the onus back on the government to come up with a solution was good.
‘lizzie says:
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 at 12:11 pm
Boerwar
I’m still irritated by the media decision that 2000 was the beginning of a new decade and century rather than the end of the old one, and here we go again into 2020. Our marketing world.’
I look forward to hot cross buns being marketed before Christmas.
Guytaur: the Greens eventually gave us Tony Abbott and the removal of the carbon ‘tax’. They were very effective and continue to be so in maintaining the LNP in power. Well done.
A chat app that quickly became popular in the United Arab Emirates for communicating with friends and family is actually a spying tool used by the government to track its users, The New York Times has reported.
The government uses ToTok to track conversations, locations, images and other data of those who install the app on their phones, The New York Times reported, citing US officials familiar with a classified intelligence assessment and the newspaper’s own investigation.
The Emirates has long blocked Apple’s FaceTime, Facebook’s WhatsApp and other calling apps. Emirati media has been playing up ToTok as an alternative for expatriates living in the country to call home to their loved ones for free.
“Starting”?
lizzie @ #131 Tuesday, December 24th, 2019 – 10:46 am
Two weeks ago at our local Coles we stopped to look at some prawns, $17/kg. I asked the young man behind the counter if they had a full kilo, since the display showed less. He answered, “Not ‘fresh’ but we’ve got lots frozen.” I ignored the ‘fresh’ and asked him, for 2 kilos. He happily obliged and gave us two separate bags of frozen prawns. We ate one lot the next night. The 2nd lot gets eaten tomorrow. Yum!
Astrobleme says:
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 at 12:12 pm
“If Labor has to lovecoal in order to defeat the Greens then lovecoal.”
Just… wow.
I’m serious. The Greens are an obstacle to the empowering of Labor and therefore to action in the environment. They will have to be defeated, along with the Right.
“One of the logical difficulties Ms Thunberg’s supporters seem to have is separating practical CO2 emissions reduction outputs from Ms Thunberg’s inputs. We need outputs, aka, serious CO2 emissions reductions.”
Well, this sounds reasonable but there is serious deficiencies in this argument.
It’s all based on the premise that people who support Greta Thunberg can’t separate emissions reduction outputs from Ms Thunberg’s inputs…
what the hell does that even mean? It’s as if it’s been written by a spambot.
Let’s break it down…
What are ’emissions reduction outputs’?
Well, I suppose it could mean emissions reductions… But Boerwar hasn’t said that…. so…. Maybe it’s comittments to reduce emissions? Who knows?
and welcome to Boerwars stupid language game…
Because you’ll argue one point, then he’ll gleefully laugh and say, oh but wait I meant other thing.
And what are ‘Ms Thunberg’s inputs’ – her speeches? her actions? both? and why are they ‘inputs’ is that to make it sound more sensible? Or some kind of quantifiable measure… Again, it’s like a spambot.
And why would the two be linked? What is the link between the outputs and inputs…
It kind of sounds like what Boerwar normally argues, which is that if you protest something, if you don’t succeed, then you are responsible for the failure… Which is a really bad argument
RI
“I’m serious. ”
Yeah. I get that.
So, join the Coalition then. They won, surely you could have more influence on the winning team… I guess.
FS
Yeah acknowledging facts is so denying reality.
Fact. The Greens voted for Labor not the LNP as a government.
Anyone telling you the Greens always work against Labor even to environmental detriment is thus lying.
The proof. The Greens voted for Labor. A fact no matter how some Labor partisans want to spin it otherwise.
“the Greens eventually gave us Tony Abbott and the removal of the carbon ‘tax’. ”
Actually, Tony Abbott became leader of the Opposition on 1 Dec 2009, the day before the vote in the Senate on the CPRS (2nd vote). He came to power, because he opposed the deal made between Wong and MacFarlane… He managed to convince enough in the Liberal Party to overthrow Turnbull
Astrobleme says:
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 at 12:22 pm
RI
“I’m serious. ”
Yeah. I get that.
So, join the Coalition then. They won, surely you could have more influence on the winning team… I guess.
Labor has policies that are relevant to the future, the Liberals do not. The Greens have a nice web site with nice wordsmith from RND’s office, and continual stunts to keep Labor out of power. That is the reality of Australian politics.
Astrobleme says:
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 at 12:25 pm
“the Greens eventually gave us Tony Abbott and the removal of the carbon ‘tax’. ”
Actually, Tony Abbott became leader of the Opposition on 1 Dec 2009, the day before the vote in the Senate on the CPRS (2nd vote).
And remind us again why the first vote failed.
@kenklipperstein tweets
Sanders and Warren claim to care about climate change and yet they exhale carbon dioxide
https://twitter.com/business/status/1209190488479277056?s=20
@business tweets
Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have hammered Amazon on the stump, but their campaigns have also spent hundreds of thousands of dollars buying supplies off the site https://bloom.bg/2EP0DXX
lizziesays:
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 at 12:11 pm
Actually it’s the beginning of the end. 🙂
yeah those dastardly pro-lib anti environment greens sure showed their true colours when labour was in government, voting against them at every turn, not propping up the minority government, sabotaging their carbon tax..
wot?
Astrobleme says:
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 at 12:22 pm
RI
“I’m serious. ”
Yeah. I get that.
So, join the Coalition then. They won, surely you could have more influence on the winning team… I guess.
Labor has policies that are relevant to the future, the Liberals do not. The Greens have a nice web site with nice wordsmith from RND’s office, and continual stunts to keep Labor out of power. That is the reality of Australian politics.
On the wider stage, as distinct from the personal and family spheres, it’s been a disappointing year, a disappointing decade and in fact the whole 21st century so far has been a disappointment.
Astrobleme says:
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 at 12:25 pm
“the Greens eventually gave us Tony Abbott and the removal of the carbon ‘tax’. ”
Actually, Tony Abbott became leader of the Opposition on 1 Dec 2009, the day before the vote in the Senate on the CPRS (2nd vote). He came to power, because he opposed the deal made between Wong and MacFarlane… He managed to convince enough in the Liberal Party to overthrow Turnbull
Remind us again why the first vote failed!
guytaursays:
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 at 12:24 pm
But they do sometimes! 🙂
Trump, by appearing to be an utter moron, has done more for the environment than any other person. He makes the right look like a bunch of dicks.
Discuss
Or, Whitlam was an environmental wrecker. Global warming was known about in the 1970s and he did nothing to help.
Fulvio Sammut says:
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 at 12:14 pm
Guytaur, you are starting to sound like the guy who can’t come to bed because someone is wrong on the internet.
____________________________________
There are a substantial number of posters here (producing between them by far the majority of posts) who meet this description. The only thing worse are certain trolls who come on here with the clear intention of winding them up when their energy is flagging.
This place would definitely be better if people just said what they thought without responding to EVERY misdirecting response or just stopped repeating themselves (because nobody but other fixed-mind tragics even read what they post and the rest have to just scroll on ad nauseam or go to rearrange their sock drawers).
“Remind us again why the first vote failed!”
Bad policy, Coalition didn’t agree, Greens didn’t agree, Xenophon didn’t agree, Family First didn’t agree…. Were there One Nation peeps in there?
The first vote was always designed to fail. Labor didn’t have the numbers and didn’t negotiate.
guytaur says:
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 at 12:24 pm
FS
Yeah acknowledging facts is so denying reality.
Fact. The Greens voted for Labor not the LNP as a government.
Anyone telling you the Greens always work against Labor even to environmental detriment is thus lying.
The proof. The Greens voted for Labor. A fact no matter how some Labor partisans want to spin it otherwise.
When it can make a difference the Greens are missing in action or voting with the Liberals, that is just the way it is.
Come on mate, another rendition of same/same to help the anti environment party out.
Astrobleme, Greens campaigned against Labor and got the LNP in government. They continue to do so on this blog. If they really cared for the environment, the Greens (and Greens on this blog) would be campaigning against the LNP. But nary a bad word for the LNP, just bag Labor.
The Greens are free to do this, but saying they are concerned for the environment does match their actions.
Nah, lets just shout at each other and howl at the moon.
Boerwar
My fave is on one major brand of frozen peas they boast of them being “Farm Picked” . Sadly the packet does not go on to enlighten us as to where lesser peas are picked,
FredNK
Thanks for proving my point.
With you all the way with Angus Taylor. Anything to get your beloved coal mine.
Let’s see: a series of comments with a singular focus on attacking the Greens (and, by implication, the ALP Left), with the Coalition mentioned only in passing?
By the very same yardstick which s/he so gleefully applies to Rex and others, PeeBee is clearly a Menzies House troll!
RI: ‘Come on mate, another rendition of same/same to help the anti environment party out.’
Well said, but they need no encouragement. They say it anyway. Anything to keep the environmental wreckers at the helm.
Boerwar says:
Tuesday, December 24, 2019 at 11:44 am
It started off being a fairly simple and direct question:
Has Ms Thunberg made a practical difference in terms of a reduction in CO2 emissions?
@TheAusInstititute tweets
Huge public support levy on coal and gas to pay for climate impacts even before bushfires. Majority from all states and major parties support, including 57% Liberal and 53% Nationals voters. 62% support overall, only 22% opposed. https://twitter.com/TheAusInstitute/status/1209286438430244865/photo/1
Itsthevibe:’PeeBee is clearly a Menzies House troll!’
FMD, you comprehension skills aren’t very good are they?
poroti
It is up there with ‘Flush after use’
The LNP, by closing car manufacturing in Australia, have achieved more for the environment in recent times than Greta Thunberg.
Boerwar @ #215 Tuesday, December 24th, 2019 – 9:17 am
I’ve already seen them, although they’re called fruit buns at this time of the year. They’re sold at my local supermarket all year round. They just change the label as it draws closer to the Northern Hemisphere spring equinox (sometimes referred to as the pagan festival devoted to the goddess Oestre/Ostara).